Heh.  I engaged the same coach at virtually the same point and level in my running career with opposite results, so I am very glad it is working out for him.  Perhaps being "sponsored by" and "being coached by" is the difference...

That reads like a Greg McMillan infomercial. 

 The adds at the bottom were the final clue for me.

 

Interesting read though.

For real Andy?  I don't recall you ever saying who coached you.  At least you had enough sense to avoid Tinman. He probably claimed to have coached you anyway. lol

 

Sorry to hear that, I hope it didn't cost you too much.  How does that work by the way?  You send the guy your bio, schedule, and race goals and he sends you a training plan.

 It's being demonstrated in another group, I understand. Does it turn out that a bunch of fast 600s are good for everyone on Tuesday?

I'm still working on life before 2:30.

For real Andy?  I don't recall you ever saying who coached you.  At least you had enough sense to avoid Tinman. He probably claimed to have coached you anyway. lol

 

Yeah.  Here's the brief version.

 

In 2003 just after I ran 2:29 (like, the next weekend) I lost a race to a OT qualifier.  He planted the damned seed in my head that I could qualify for the OT.  A friend of mine was being coached my Olympian Marc Davis via email/phone, and it was affordable even for a grad student, so I did it.

 

I have very little bad to say about Marc.  VERY little.  I learned quite a bit, got a lot of new workouts, and the guy genuinely cared about my individual success.  We spoke weekly, he clearly red through every workout report I submitted, and adjusted in real time.

 

The only problem I had was towards the end he got busy with some other stuff (life happens) and we went several weeks without talking.  Unfortunately, this coincided with when things started to fall apart for me and we missed the warning signs.  As much my fault as his, and he felt bad about it.  We parted ways amiably and I went back to self-coaching.

 

So in 2005 I decided I was going all or nothing for the 2008 Trials.  Greg seemed like a really reputable guy so I decided to eat the fees (it WAS expensive) and try to give myself the best chance possible.

 

Now, some of what that link says is true.  There was a huge questionnaire that took me several hours to complete.  I saw this as a good sign.

 

The problem was, this was NOT a personalized training program with a level of personal engagement to justify the cost.  I got a plan relatively right for my level, but not a whole lot of communication.  I religiously submitted reports of each week's runs but nothing was ever adjusted.  The details escape me now, but at one point the communication was so bad he had me training toward the wrong race date or something and comped a couple months of coaching.

 

When we got into late summer, it got really bad.  While I had felt we had gone far too long without any increase in pace or volume, all of a sudden both rocketed to levels one could not expect a runner to keep up with unless they had been there before (I had NOT).  I started missing workout goals....BADLY.  Now, in retrospect I was suffering from anemia and that was not his fault.  The end result would have been the same, but it was the process that angered me.  I would report how terribly I'd bombed an interval workout, not even finishing, and the next day a schedule would arrive expecting me to do even more the next week.

 

I finally just quit doing the stuff.  And I quit submitting workout reports....didn't report on goal races....and apparently he never missed any of it.

 

Remote coaching is HARD.  There is important feedback that is missing so it requires dedication by both parties to make up for it.  Marc was dedicated to this and so for the most part it worked pretty well.  Greg charged several fold as much and forgot me after giving me the initial plan, it appeared.

 

When I communicated my displeasure he seemed indignate, saying that I had gotten "extra attention" due to my potential.  In total, I talked to him maybe 2-3 times on the phone, got an email back every 1-2 weeks that was mostly "rah rah you can do it" and not real coaching input, and had my workout results completely ignored.  All the while hundreds of dollars were going down the drain, and I was poor enough at the time that it was a sacrifice to fund that.

 

I subsequently learned I was anemic and got my iron up.  Then I trained myself, using some of Marc's stuff and improvising from there and ran my PRs 4-5 months later.

Heh. Find you hat while you were on sabatical?